Over the last several years, there has been considerable growth in the availability of digital cable and satellite television broadcasting. As demand for digital programming continues to grow, cable television providers are transitioning from analog cable transmission systems and converters to mixed analog/digital and all-digital cable distribution systems.
Increasing competition from digital satellite service providers has contributed to increased demand for more and different digital cable services including digital data services, interactive programming services and “on-demand” services like video-on-demand (VOD). A high-end variant of VOD, “everything-on-demand” (EOD) offers a dedicated, full-time video and audio stream for every user. An EOD stream can be used to view time-shifted TV, movies, or other content stored by content providers at the headend of the network, with full VCR-like controls such as pause, fast forward, random access with “bookmarks”, etc.
In combination with other services like interactive programming, cable Internet services, etc., these per-user services require considerably more infrastructure than do pure broadcast services. These newer, high-end services require a server subsystem to provide dynamically customized multi-program multiplexes on a per-user basis. Clearly, this requires a great deal of high-speed, high-performance processing, data routing, encoding and multiplexing hardware that would not otherwise be required.
As demand continues to grow for these high-end, per-user services, there is a growing need for more efficient, more cost-effective methods of creating large numbers of custom program multiplexes.
Television signals are commonly delivered to the home using distribution systems based on coaxial cable, twisted-pair telephone wires, optical fiber, or wireless terrestrial or satellite transmissions. In many cases, programming is made available at no cost to the viewer, and instead the content providers and the content distributors are indirectly compensated based on revenues raised from advertising. In other cases, content is made available without advertisements, and in such cases, compensation is based on alternative sources of funding such as donations, or subscription and pay-per-view fees that are paid by the viewer. Today, viewer fees are usually charged for premium programming, however, in the future, fees may also be charged for general programming if such content can be delivered on-demand.
The delivery of on-demand programming is controlled by the viewer. Specifically, the viewer may be provided with the ability to select a program, begin playback at any time, pause and resume playback, reverse the direction of playback, speed up and slow down playback, or jump to any desired location in the program. One consequence of offering on-demand programming is that it enables the viewer to avoid viewing the advertisements that may have been inserted into a program, either by increasing the playback rate or jumping further forward into the program. This can become problematic if relatively large numbers of viewers are equipped with on-demand capabilities and the content owners are deriving their compensation from revenues that originate from the advertisers. Possible solutions to this potential problem include imposing restrictions on the level of control that is made available to the viewer, switching to a targeted or addressable advertising model which may be better tuned to the interests of each particular viewer, or levying a fee on the viewer in return for programming that is advertisement free.
Any time a fee is charged to the public, either to receive premium content, or to receive programming on-demand, it is important to provide mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access to content delivered over publicly accessible infrastructure. Access control is also important to limit the viewing of content that is confidential, sensitive in nature, or deemed unsuitable for the general public for other reasons. The solution that has been adopted by the television industry is to deploy Conditional Access (CA) systems. Most CA systems use digital encryption and are based on ciphers that encode and “randomize” the video and audio signals. Such randomized signals can be restored only through the application of special keys to the cipher modules. Such keys are usually protected and/or encrypted using ciphers that are even more secure than those applied to the signal itself. Typically, such encrypted keys are embedded into the television signal in messages known as ECMs (Entitlement Control Messages). During the presentation of a program, the keys are often changed on a regular basis and are only decodable once a viewer has been granted access to the encrypted program or to a programming class that is associated with a particular encrypted program. Such classes of programs are known as encryption tiers. Individual viewers can be granted access to selected encryption tiers through the use of messages known as EMMs (Entitlement Management Messages). EMMs are transmitted on a relatively infrequent basis, or whenever a change in entitlement occurs, and may be decodable only by the intended viewer. The EMMs include the information that is needed to interpret the ECMs corresponding to one or more encryption tiers.
Encryption equipment for television signals is deployed in cable head-ends, satellite uplink centers, and other sites where television signals are distributed. Such equipment is manufactured and maintained by a relatively small number of vendors, and is usually based on closely guarded proprietary technology. This protection of information helps to insure that a system is not compromised and continues to resist unauthorized attempts to access encrypted programming. Unfortunately, by limiting the number of vendors that have access to this market, it becomes more difficult to introduce technological innovations and a barrier is created for new entrants seeking to enter this market with more efficient products. For instance, hardware in a cable head-end may include satellite demodulation and decryption systems, video servers, multiplexers, transcoders, encryptors, and modulators. The ability to deliver on-demand capabilities at a cost that the head-end operator can afford depends on the ability of vendors to offer such equipment at prices that are significantly lower than they are today. Unfortunately, this may not be possible if the cost of the encryption and decryption components remains high, or if these components continue to be manufactured in low density enclosures and are not integrated with other head-end equipment.